


Guitar Tuesdays (or A Conversation About Missing Parents)

by rosieblue



Category: Boy Meets World, Girl Meets World
Genre: An AU That Really Should Be Real, Gen, Not Canon Complaint, Sort of Family Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 21:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8029213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosieblue/pseuds/rosieblue
Summary: "Ms. Moore, did you ever miss your mom?"





	Guitar Tuesdays (or A Conversation About Missing Parents)

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was on an slow, uneventful Tuesday, when Angela had had a well-spread, un-stressful schedule and Maya a suspension, that the latter asked the question that started it all.

 

 

 

"Ms. Moore, did you ever miss your mom?", Maya had asked her as they were finishing up their lesson. 

 

Angela had been expecting her to ask that question, if she was being honest, though she did not expect it this soon or this sudden. 

 

 

 

When Riley and Maya started actively watching reruns of Hannah Montana, they'd both discovered an interest in music, specifically in playing the guitar. 

 

"Oh, please, Mom", Riley had asked that day. "We need guitar lessons!"

 

Topanga already had an expression of someone considering their options and what would they cost.

 

"Okay", she finally said, eyes lighting up. "By the way, did you know that Angela is a wonderful guitarist?"

 

"I almost forgot you played, Aunt Angie", Riley said, with a winning smile that seemed almost identical to her mother's.

 

"I haven't played in a long time", Angela said, truthfully, trying to wheedle herself out of Topanga's plan. "I've probably forgotten all of it."

 

"Nonsense", Topanga said, with a pointed look. "Angela, you're the greatest guitarist I've ever seen. That can't possibly go away."

 

And that was how Angela reluctantly got two guitar students squeezed in between her deadlines.

 

 

 

The lessons started and though Angela had expected them to be somewhat tiring, they'd turned out to be kind of fun.

 

Riley dropped out seven lessons in, apologizing profusely. "I'm really, really sorry, Auntie", she'd said. "I just think I'm more of a piano person. Honest."

 

Maya, though, much to Angela's surprise, kept showing up.

 

They'd spend lesson after lesson, the awkwardness pervading in the beginning, especially when neither Shawn nor Jamila were around, but fading gradually.

 

Angela had never had Maya over alone. Usually, she and Riley came over together to have dinner or to hang out with Jamila and get gossip and first-hand recaps of the struggles of a high school freshman or to get dibs on souvenirs either she or Shawn bought them from those little writing trips.

 

  

Maya had always had an air of nervousness around her, never really sure if she can call her 'Angela', like Riley did most of the time. She'd always be more relaxed around Shawn, which didn't really surprise Angela at all.

 

As she grew up before their eyes, Angela started noticing that Maya and Shawn were pretty much cut from the same cloth.

 

She'd always had the troublemaker disposition he had when he was younger, but the more Angela knew about her family life, it was clear the similarities didn't stop there.

 

In the little she'd heard her speak about it, Angela sometimes thought she was really hearing Shawn talking about his family.

 

Maya would mention things like 'pilot season' and not really seeing all that much of her mother, and Angela could swear the scenery changed and it was 1998 and Shawn was telling her he had never really seen his father two days in a row, even when he was in town.

 

For that alone, Angela couldn't take a liking to Katy, in the two times she'd seen her. It brought back way too much hurt and anger at her _own_ mother. Hurt that was very much visible in Maya's off-hand comments.

 

' _Am I not good enough_ ?'

 

 

 

Shawn had tried to be as pleasant as he could the day he met her, but sometimes the pleasant face would slip and Angela would catch a glimpse of the same expression he had when mentioning his father: disbelief, scrutiny, anger, and a very slight, very undetectable understanding.

 

Maya had only caught the first part, with the politely pleasant face, and on those two occasions Angela and Shawn had met Katy, she'd moved her glances between her mother and Shawn with a wry smile.

 

She'd usually follow that with a very guilty look at Angela, as if apologizing her imagination.

 

Still, Angela had managed to see that on some occasions, Katy really did try, or at least that's what she'd heard from Topanga, and for that alone, she couldn't wholly despise her. 

 

 

 

"I did", Angela said, after a while of silence. "I still do."

 

"Did you...did you ever wonder if it was your fault?", Maya asked, with a downcast look.

 

"Sometimes, I did. Sometimes I tried to blame my father, though."

 

"You did?"

 

The surprise in her voice was telling; Maya hadn't expected that much similarity between them. Angela nodded, acknowledging her.

 

"Yeah", Angela said. "My father and I talked about it after a while and...he made me realize that it was something between them."

 

Angela made sure to look Maya in the eye as she said the next part. "He made sure to tell me it's not my fault."

 

Maya bit her lips, considering her next question. "Did you ever feel something was missing?"

 

Angela nodded. "It felt like a big part of my life suddenly disappeared, but it got better. My father did the best he could and I knew that."

 

"It wasn't always sunshine and daisies, though", she added a second later.

 

Maya looked like she wanted to say something, hesitating a little. She opened her mouth and closed it, nodding for Angela to continue. 

 

 

 

As they talked and swapped stories about their parents, among other things, Angela realized that that was the first time she and Maya ever seriously talked.

 

 In later years, both she and Maya would say that it was on that Tuesday, after a guitar lesson, that they really connected. Even if their versions sometimes differed in little details.

 

_('Angela', Maya would say in the future, sometimes replacing Angela's name with Mrs. Moore. 'I was eleven years-old; it was **so** before you went blonde!'. _ _Angela would shake her head then, 'I'm pretty sure I went blonde that year, Maya')_

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

  

 

(Neither of them knew that in a different world, they would never have had a conversation like that. 

 

In fact, neither knew that they wouldn't have ever talked, really, or have had any guitar lessons between them.

 

In that world, the one in which Angela loses touch with her friends and boyfriend and returns to an empty Philadelphia a year later, she's a mother seven years too late and hasn't been to New York in fifteen. 

And though her children wouldn't be the Jamila and Aria she had right now, she would eventually, for some funny reason, find the urge to name one of them Aria.

  

In that world, though it seemed absurd, her husband was not a writer and photographer but a military man and he would be the one to father her children, both biological and adopted. 

 

The most ridiculous change of all, the one Angela would scoff and laugh hilariously at if told, would be that she would not have spoken to Topanga after boarding that plane back from Italy.

 

It wouldn't feel right to her; a world in which she misses her best friend's law school graduation, a world in which Riley doesn't call her 'Aunt Angela!' with an excitement that lit up her face when she comes back from a work trip in one state or another.

 

And though Maya would eventually have Shawn as a step-father, she would still not know that not having a dad did not make her, in any way, lacking. She would still feel a part was missing, but she wouldn't know that it didn't really define her. 

 

But in this word, the one they lived in now, none of that would happen.

 

In this world, Riley still chattered playfully to Angela and called her a various of names, including: Angela, Angie, Auntie Ang, and on one very special occasion, My Other Mother. She would also, very much like her father, inherit the habit of calling Shawn 'Shawnie', always adding a little more twang than necessary in her voice, much to his chagrined amusement.

 

In this world, long after Topanga owns a bakery and Katy starts working there, Angela and Katy have a very emotional, long conversation, which Katy ends with the words 'thank you' and a gesture to her daughter.

 

They would always be now the way they were then, and wouldn't that be a much nicer ending?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
